


Babylon don't love you

by Rikku



Category: Magisterium Series - Holly Black & Cassandra Clare, The Iron Trial
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikku/pseuds/Rikku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Call opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t end up needing to, as Aaron walked up behind Jasper.</p><p>“Yeah, because Call is the enemy,” Aaron said, his hands in his pockets. “The one the world’s working together to fight. The reason we’re all here. Rampaging across cities, killing millions. Call. Not, I don’t know, giant sea monsters or anything.”'</p><p>Magisterium/Pacific Rim crossover, because the counterweight thing made me think of drifting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Babylon don't love you

Kids their age should probably have been in school, trading notes and staking out lockers. The whole end of the world thing had kind of changed that. Call guessed that stuff like making sure teenagers led enriching lives came second to stopping the apocalypse.

Well, weathering the apocalypse. Personally, he didn’t think any of what they were doing, pilot school and Shatterdome and jaegers and all, had a fireball’s chance in the Breach of doing much more than slowing the inevitable. People always got weirdly mad when he said that, though. Take Jasper, currently fixing his fancy hair and glowering at Call for just _mentioning_ that they were all going to die horribly.

“If that’s what you think, why are you even here?” Jasper snapped, and looked Call up and down. “You don’t belong here.”

Call stopped walking, his leg dragging just a bit behind. Any comebacks dried out on his tongue.

Jasper’s eyes widened a little, as if looking back on what he’d said and realising only now what it sounded like. “Because you’re a kaiju groupie,” he said quickly, which Call guessed was better.

 _I’m not a groupie_ , Call thought, fiercely. The kaiju dreams didn’t mean anything. His dad had said so. He got the feeling that Jasper wouldn’t look on it that way, though. “I’m not saying kaiju are good,” Call said, spreading his hands out in a shrug. “I’m here to fight, aren’t I? I’m just saying they’re _badass_.”

“Maybe if you actually did some work instead of wasting your time on kaiju, you wouldn’t be getting such low scores,” Jasper said with a smirk.

Call made himself bite back his anger. He didn’t really feel like fighting Jasper today, not after logging five hours in the simulator and getting no kills. And blown apart one time. Even in a simulation, that was very stressful. “I just think you should know your enemy,” he said, in what he hoped was a pacifying, non-confrontational way.

The other boy narrowed his eyes. “You should be careful, then,” he said, with a look that was probably meant to be intimidating. He crossed his arms. “Because seeing as we entered training at the same time, I know you pretty well.”

Call opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t end up needing to, as Aaron walked up behind Jasper.

“Yeah, because _Call_ is the enemy,” Aaron said, his hands in his pockets. “The one the world’s working together to fight. The reason we’re all here. Rampaging across cities, killing millions. Call. Not, I don’t know, giant sea monsters or anything.”

Call laughed, and Aaron grinned at him as Jasper scowled. For someone so nice, Aaron sure had a gift for being dry and sarcastic. Call could get behind that. The sarcasm at least made it a little easier to deal with how Aaron had a gift for basically everything.

“Doesn’t the constant pessimism get old?” Jasper argued, waving at Call. “He’s just saying it to pick a fight.” He straightened, virtuous. “Like you said, we’re in this together. We shouldn’t fight.”

“Yes,” Aaron said, and raised his eyebrows at Jasper until he muttered something under his breath and left.

Call looked after him, then at Aaron. “I had it covered,” he said, maybe a little too surly. He should probably have thanked him, but Call was sick of people acting like he needed to be saved. He wanted to be the one to do the saving, for a change.

“I know,” Aaron said cheerfully. “I just wanted to see the look on his face. You know the one?” He twisted his own face into an exaggerated, bug-eyed scowl, and Call gave a grudging grin. Aaron grinned back. “You headed to the mess?” 

His stomach rumbled as if on cue. “Yeah,” he admitted.

Aaron nodded at that and started walking in the same direction, so Call fell into step beside him. Aaron always slowed down to match his pace, which he appreciated. Grudgingly. 

Aaron glanced at him curiously as they walked. “Aren’t you a bit late for lunch?” he said.

That was an understatement. It was probably nearly dark outside, not that Call had seen the sky any time recently. Sometimes living and training in the least-used parts of the Shatterdome felt like living underground, holed away in some cave somewhere. Maybe if they all hid underground, they’d survive this, but Call didn’t think so. He thought the kaiju would learn to dig. They were smarter than people thought, hard foes to fight.

“I was training,” Call said. His leg ached at the thought, so to distract himself he elbowed his friend. “What about you? You’re not exactly early either.”

“The masters cornered me after class again,” Aaron said, a frown passing over his face. He looked down at the ground. “I don’t know what’s up with all these tests. Maybe I’m failing.”

Call snorted. “Sure. _You’re_ failing. Look, if anyone’s going to fail it’s me.” He glanced up as they entered the cavernous mess hall, to the sky that was somewhere out there. “I’ll make sure to wave at all of you in a few years when you go off to be heroes. Though who knows? Maybe they’ll let me fly one of the helicopters.”

Aaron shook his head. “You’re not that bad,” he told Call. That was Aaron, stubbornly loyal even when it made zero sense. He must’ve seen Call’s doubt on his face, because he frowned even more. “I mean, physicals aren’t everything. No one has as good a weapons score as you.”

He was good at blowing things up, true. Call nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe they’ll let me shoot from one of the helicopters,” he said.

Aaron sighed.

The long tables were pushed back, meal time long over, but often there were leftovers for the J-tech crews, scientists and pilots who kept strange hours, and they could raid those.

Before the two were even halfway across the metal floor, a notification flashed red in the great board overlooking the hall, a message belting out over the speakers. The actual words couldn’t be heard, they were so echoey, but Call froze. There was only one reason why a message would be going out at this time of day, without the triple-flash that meant it was a kaiju attack or an emergency with one of this Shatterdome’s jaegers. There was an emergency, but not one they could do anything about.

“A jaeger is down,” Aaron said, hushed. Call nodded mechanically and racked his brain.

“Who do we have out there?” he said, shifting restlessly. This kind of thing always made him want to _move_ , to help, but there was nothing he could do. “There was that big category three off the coast a few hours back, that’d fall under, what, Peru Shatterdome? Who would they …”

His mind stumbled over the thought, but there was no avoiding it, not with Aaron rushing off as fast as he could go with Call still able to hurry behind him. When he got there Aaron was staring furiously at the flickering notification as though he could somehow change it. He waved towards it, and Call looked.

The Honour Legacy. The Legacy was down.

“Oh, no,” Aaron said, saying what they both were thinking, face pale as milk. “Tamara.”

 

 

 

Tamara Rajavi was one of the top students in their year, up there with Aaron, and sometimes Call nearly thought she was as scary as a kaiju in her own way. Tamara was determined to become a Ranger – not only that, the best Ranger – not only that, the youngest yet. It made sense she wanted to so badly, with both her sisters being jaeger pilots. A bit like how Call’s mother had worked on the Queen Semiramis back when she was around.

Aaron didn’t have any family. “They were in San Francisco,” he had said with a shrug, the one time Call had worked up the nerve to ask. He thought there might be more to the story than Aaron was telling, but that did, really, say it all. You got a lot of orphans, these days. Heck, that probably helped the Defence Corps in finding angry, determined kids to train, kids who were motivated to take down the monsters that took out their own lives, their homes and families. 

It also meant that all the trainees were pretty messed up, like, mentally. Which, as Call would tell anyone who asked, was just one of the many reasons why this whole program was so very doomed.

Tamara had been unusual, in that she still had her parents and her sisters. Looked like she wasn’t special any more.

Well, Tamara was always special, and terrifying, but now she had to face up to how awful things were. Call found himself wishing she didn’t have to, that some world really did exist where death wasn’t inevitable and everyone’s family was still alive and loved them. He was never able to believe in that world, but Aaron was, through optimism, and Tamara was through sheer force of will. She didn’t believe in that world, she believed that she could _make it happen_.

When they got to her room she was crying.

It was audible through the blast door to her room, choked-down sobs, as though even now she was trying to keep to her rigid control. Call and Aaron glanced at each other.

“Maybe we should leave her alone,” Aaron whispered. Call considered.

“She would’ve heard first,” he said reluctantly. “It’s been a while. We should probably at least check if she wants company.”

He waited for Aaron to contradict him. Aaron, the traitor, didn’t. That was that, then. With more courage than he felt Call lifted his hand and knocked at the door.

There was silence for a moment, and then a sniff, and then the creak of the wheel being turned. Tamara flung open the door and gave them a challenging glare, ruined somewhat by the fact that tears were still streaking down her face. She scrubbed at them ferociously.

She could be like a loaded weapon even when something awful hadn’t just happened. Call had no idea how to –

“I got sushi,” Aaron said, holding it up. “D’you mind if we come in? We’re here for you, if you want us to be.”

He said it gently, but even so, Call was pretty sure that if he’d tried the same gesture - especially the sushi, which made Tamara’s face crumple up at the sight of it – she would’ve slammed the door right in his nose. Instead she opened it wider, silently. Aaron came in, Call lagging behind as he stepped over the bottom of the doorway. 

Tamara sat on her perfectly-made bed, back straight. Aaron put the sushi on a desk, the room’s sole other piece of furniture, and hovered until Tamara sighed through her nose and waved for them to sit down. Aaron sat down on one side, Call on the other. He wasn’t sure, really, if Tamara wanted him there – Aaron was the one who was good at people, the nice one – but his leg hurt and he really wanted to sit down. She could always push him off.

She didn’t, though, just went back to staring into space. Her hands, laid on her knees, were in tight fists. It looked kind of painful.

“They were brave,” Aaron said quietly, and the tension in her chest unhooked. She started to cry, and after a moment leaned in to Aaron’s shoulder. He paused, then wrapped an arm around her. She hid her face, her own shoulders shaking as she cried.

“Uh,” Call said. “I should probably just –”

Tamara somehow made a noise of derision through her tears, and yanked him back down before he could really stand, holding him close too, holding both of them. They ended up cuddled together in a sort of pile, Tamara leaning against Aaron with an arm around Call, Call leant up against her a little with his leg stretched out on the bed, as Tamara wept for her family.

Call realised that she was _letting_ them see her cry. Letting herself be vulnerable around them, trusting them with that. The realisation made a lump rise in his throat, and his own eyes were a little damp. He squeezed them shut in case anyone saw. The death count played out in his mind’s eye, the blazing explosion that the two older Rajavi sisters probably died in. Boom and they were gone, just like that. Call sensibly kept himself from saying this. Maybe he really was learning something here.

Aaron didn’t say anything, didn’t soothe, didn’t move even though he had to be getting pins and needles by now. Eventually Tamara’s sobs slowed, and stopped. There was silence for a while.

“I don’t want to be a Ranger any more,” she whispered, voice hoarse and terribly small. “I don’t want to. I don’t _want_ to.”

Call shot Aaron a startled glance. Tamara had always wanted this the most out of anything.

Aaron returned his glance with one of warning. “You don’t have to be,” he said to Tamara. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah, leave the sweet kills for the rest of us,” Call chimed in. Then he froze. That was probably an awful thing to –

Tamara gave a hiccupy laugh. A moment later she sat up, so fast that Aaron said, “Ow,” and started to massage the feeling back into his leg, wincing. _Ha_ , Call thought at him, _now you know how it feels_.

Tamara looked between them. “You massive losers,” she said, voice cracking from crying. “Neither of you two die.”

Call stayed silent. He wasn’t sure that was a promise he could make. Not that he’d ever get to pilot a jaeger, unless it was a really broken-down, unwanted jaeger, but with things as they were, who could say when death would come calling?

Tamara’s eyes blazed with fury, maybe not at him. “Neither of you are going to die,” she repeated.

Tamara had a way of speaking as though the world would rewrite itself to her will if she was just determined enough, and Call found himself nodding along.

But these were uncertain times. You never could tell what was going to happen.

 

 

 

It was barely a week later when Aaron stumbled into their own smaller kitchen pale as the bad porridge they’d had for breakfast that morning. Call, who had been staring at the coffee pot intently, thinking _percolate faster!_ , broke his deep contemplation to grin up at his friend.

“Sure that you don’t want to take up coffee?” Call said, waving the spare tin cup enticingly. How anyone could get through the day without sweet, sweet caffeine was a mystery to him. It was definitely the only thing keeping him awake right now, with midnight dragging closer and half his paperwork still undone.

Hilariously enough, logging so much practice time meant he was falling behind on his written work. Not that there was much of that. _A category four is approaching your city at twenty kilometres an hour. Find how long it will take for your jaeger to intercept, factoring in that your co-pilot is bent on revenge._

Aaron didn’t respond, and Call lowered the cup with the first stirrings of unease. That was more than just up-too-late paleness. It wasn’t even caught-a-gross-stomach-bug paleness. Call couldn’t remember ever seeing him like this.

“What’s wrong?” Call said, and Aaron shook his head mutely. 

Call watched with growing concern as his friend leaned against the counter and breathed out shakily, his green eyes wide and wild. “My scores,” Aaron said at last. “I … they say I have the most promise of anyone, they’re – Call, they’re going to put me in advanced training.”

He couldn’t immediately figure out what that was, or why it would have Aaron so shaken. “So, what, you’ll have to work harder or something?” Call said, frowning. Aaron glared up at him, eyes sharp and hard as glass.

“They’re making me a Ranger,” he snapped, deadly pale. “My name’s on the list for the next jaeger.”

For a second Call just stood there and stared, unable to wrap his head around it. Even with all his doomsaying, all his dire predictions, he would never have thought of this. “You’re twelve,” he said. His voice sounded weird and weak. “You’re just a kid.”

Aaron laughed, breathy and unhappy, and ran hands through his hair again. It was already sticking up like a mop. In other circumstances Call would’ve thought it was funny. “Looks like that’s not going to get in their way. I, I guess we’re all the same size in a jaeger, right? And they say I’m ideal for a … a new type of machine, smaller, faster. Stronger.” He sat down, abruptly, not bothering to go to all the bother of getting a _chair_ or anything, just falling to the floor. “I always thought – I want to help, I want to repay the Corps. But I never … I didn’t think it would be this soon.”

Neither had Call. He pulled out a chair for himself, dropping into it heavily. He hadn’t thought he’d lose either of them, not yet. Not for at least another couple of years. They were the first friends he’d ever had. 

“And who’s going to want to drift with a kid?” Aaron was saying, his voice distinctly tinged with hysteria. He messed his hair again. “With – no one should have to see the stuff that’s in my brain.”

 _Same_ , Call thought distantly. _Oh, same_. Even aside from his leg, he didn’t know who’d ever be able to put up with him well enough to actually share his mind. _He_ didn’t even want to be in his brain. He’d never found even anyone who wanted to take on any part of him, except.

“I will,” Call said. Aaron stopped his rant and glanced at him.

“Huh?” he said, and then sat up, eyes widening. “Call, you can’t.”

Call went on talking, hastily, as if explaining his idea fast enough would stop Aaron from shooting it down at least. There were a lot of reasons to shoot it down. Call would be a terrible Ranger, Call was gloomy and grumpy, even if someone was willing to be his friend it didn’t mean – “I mean,” he said, “if they don’t find someone else who’ll work better. But you can’t be partnered with some adult, right? At least we know each other. And if part of it’s because there’s a new type of jaeger, well, I’m the right sort of size. You said I was good at weapons.” He knew he was rambling, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

Aaron shook his head. “I’d be honoured to drift with you,” he said, which, what, “but Call.” He looked up at him, eyes wide and anxious. “It’s dangerous. It’s insane. You’ll die.”

 _Well, yeah_ , Call thought. _That’s all true for you too, dumbass._ “I’ll keep you from dying,” he corrected.

The door opened. Tamara stood there, face very serious.

Call half expected her to yell at them – "I told you not to die! Can’t you even do that right?" – but instead she walked across the room to Call’s tragically abandoned coffee pot, and poured herself a cup. She drained it in one swallow. Call watched in awe.

Tamara set the cup back down with a bang and turned to them, braids swinging. “You’ll need someone in mission control,” she said, chin stubbornly forwards, though her voice threatened to waver. “I know Corps people, I know how commanders are. They won’t know how to deal with kids. They’ll push you too hard, or not hard enough.” She crossed her arms. “They need me there, to handle you.”

Call found himself nodding. It made sense. They were a team. Aaron, though, shook his head.

“There’s no guarantee that they’ll let Call co-pilot,” he said, giving Call an apologetic grimace, awkward and faltering like he always was when he had to talk about Call’s leg. He looked back at Tamara. “They won’t listen to us.”

“If they’re designing a jaeger specifically for this, they can build that into its design,” she said impatiently. “It just depends who controls what hemisphere. They’ll listen to me.” She looked at Aaron. “They need you, and you need us. If the people in command are going to send you out there –” Loathing in her voice, and Tamara had always had the most faith in authority out of all of them. “Then at least I’m going to make sure you’re not alone. I’ll _make_ them listen.” 

There was utter certainty in her voice. This time, Call believed her.

“Okay, so,” he said, proud of how his voice wobbled only a little bit, “to sum it up, the goal is – not to die. The three of us, together, not dying.”

Tamara nodded. Aaron looked between the two of them, looking like he wanted to argue, looking like he wanted to cry. He nodded too.

“I’m going to need so much more coffee,” Call said. Aaron gave a strangled little laugh, and Call levered himself out of the chair, reaching out a hand to his friend. He regretted the impulse instantly, but Aaron took his hand, let him help him up even though realistically he needed no help at all.

Handshake, ha. Pretty soon they’d have the other type of handshake, the neural kind. He hadn’t practiced drifting, yet. Everyone said that the child brain was too young to handle the strain, that you had to be at least sixteen, but it seemed like that, too, was a small concern when compared to the survival of the race. Well, at least if they all died with blood dribbling out their noses then Call would’ve been _right_.

That thought was way less comforting than it should’ve been.

There was a bit of poetry stuck in his head, something his dad had always said, and Call exhaled. Why not. They were going to be sharing everything, from here on, so there wasn’t any harm in being a dork about poetry in front of them. “Cry havoc, let loose the kids of war,” he said, mangling it slightly. Then he said, “Hey, that’s a good jaeger name.”

“‘Kids of War’?” Tamara said sceptically. Call shook his head.

“No, Cry Havoc,” Aaron said, before he could, and they exchanged a glance. For the first time since volunteering, Call thought they might actually be drift compatible.

Aaron held out his fist, and Call bumped it. Tamara held her hand out over theirs and wiggled her fingers.

Maybe they could really do this, the three of them, against all the odds. Maybe they could survive the drift, and take down kaiju; maybe they could even close the breach. Save the world. Survive.

Call grinned at his friends, exhilarated and scared, and tried not to think about how it was a pretty big maybe.


End file.
